


You Made a Family From People You Found

by Duck_Life



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, Episode Related, Everyone Is Gay, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Internalized Homophobia, LGBTQ Themes, Lesbian Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-05-29 04:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15064949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Shawn grows up, learning about love and watching his best friends figure it out, too.





	1. Playground Mates for Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a BMW rewrite that makes everything gayer. So far, most of the chapters are tied to specific episodes. It'll eventually be Cory/Shawn and Topanga/Angela. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> The title is from "Photos From When We Were Young" by Nana Grizol.   
>  "So you made a family from people you found  
>  You grew into yourself with those weirdos around"

> **“I think the only way you can judge a family is by how much love there is in the home.” - Topanga Lawrence, “Model Family”**

They start talking about it one day in fourth grade when Cory is home with the flu. Shawn and Topanga are on the swings, and he’s pumping his legs the way she taught him. “Hey, Topanga, who are you gonna marry?”

She rolls her eyes. “You know who I'm gonna marry.”

“Okay well if you didn't marry Cory, who would you marry?”

Topanga thinks about it for a moment, her motions slowing down as her feet drag in the dirt beneath the swingset. “Amanda,” she says finally. Amanda sits next to Shawn in school and has strawberry blonde hair that she always wears in braids. 

Shawn laughs. “You're a girl. You can’t can’t marry another girl.”

“Says who?” Topanga demands. 

“Says everyone,” Shawn says back, sticking out his tongue at her. “My mom said so anyway. She said girls never marry other girls.”

“Then I'll be the first one,” Topanga announces, Cory momentarily forgotten. “I'll be the first girl to marry another girl.”


	2. Pretending

> **“If you need to get together with the girls of your gender, I completely understand.” - Cory Matthews, “The Grass Is Always Greener”**

Hamilton High kids really aren’t different from John Adams kids. Everyone looks pretty much the same to Shawn, but he’s glad Cory seems to be having fun playing Shawn. (And he looks adorable in Shawn’s jacket.)

“Your night’s about to get even better,” Shawn promises him. “Word is, there’s a couple of very hot lesbians at this party.”

Cory looks confused. “So?”

“‘So’?” Shawn repeats, mock-offended. “Girls kissing girls? Swapping lip gloss? It’s all the rest of the guys here are talking about.”

“If the girls are kissing each other doesn’t that just mean they’re kissing the guys less?” Cory points out. Even as he tries to work through this logic, a group of boys pass them, all whispering about these gay girls at the party and trying to find the best vantage point to watch the “action.” 

“You’re… right,” Shawn admits. “I dunno. But hey, girls with girls! That’s new. Not something you’d see on a double date with your folks, right?” 

Cory smiles. “I hope those gals are having a nice time out on the town.”

Shawn sighs and pushes his bangs out of his face. “Alright, you’re slipping back into Old Man Cory again. Go, go have fun. Talk to some nice straight girls.”  

“Aw, come on, I’ve got Topanga,” Cory says, looking sheepish. “You should go hit on girls, that’s a you thing.”

“I’m not me tonight, though,” Shawn reminds him. “You are.” He messes with the collar of Cory’s borrowed jacket and winks at him. “Go get ‘em.” 

Cory smiles and starts to wander off, but then he looks back in a panic. “What do girls who aren’t Topanga even like to talk about?”

“Cheese,” Shawn says simply. “They love it. Talk about cheese.”

“Cheese,” Cory repeats, nodding at the sage advice. “Okay.” He vanishes into the throng of Hamilton High students. Shawn watches him disappear with a grin, proud to see Cory enjoying himself for a night. He’s always so self-conscious.

Shawn mills around, sucking down a couple ginger ales and making small talk with a few other people. He can’t be Shawn Hunter while Cory’s busy being Shawn Hunter, but there’s no way in hell he’s about to be  _ Cory _ . He’s trying to find some middle ground here, which mostly ends up with him leaning on a wall and people-watching. 

He watches girls dancing poorly to TLC. He watches some sad guy get shut down by two different girls. When Cory finally resurfaces, he’s bubbling with excitement. “I’m having the best time!” he says, eyes wide. He looks even more excited than he does when they go to the aquarium. “This sure beats shopping for slacks.”

“You  _ wild _ man,” Shawn says, low-fiving him. He loves seeing his best friend like this. When Cory’s happy it’s like the entire room lights up. He missed that. It’s not that the guy doesn’t love Topanga, Shawn’s sure of that, but the past month has been kind of a drag. Shawn’s been watching his two best friends get over the thrill of having their first relationship and struggle to figure out what they are now. 

Cory refuels at the snack station and dances off to have some more fun. Shawn turns around and suddenly, there they are. The mysterious lesbians, kissing against the back wall. Watching them together, Shawn’s not really sure what the big deal is, or why the two guys next to him are so stoked to see the girls kissing. Doesn’t seem that different to boys and girls kissing to him. 

The lesbian with her back to him breaks off the kiss and turns around to glare at the onlookers— and that’s when Shawn gets a good look at her face.

He gasps. “To _ panga _ .” 

She pales, and then turns back to the other girl. “I’m really sorry, Tiff, I have to go.” And then she whirls around to face Shawn. “Outside, now,” she tells him through gritted teeth. She sounds mad, but he kind of gets the feeling that she’s acting angry to cover up how scared she is.

It’s a technique he’s perfected over the years.

“Right behind you,” he says. Ditching Tiff and the Hamilton High crowd and the ogling boys and Cory, wherever he is, Shawn and Topanga step outside. 

The first thing she says is, “It's not what you think.”

“What do you think I think?” Shawn asks, folding his arms.

“That I'm cheating on Cory or that I don't love him anymore, but that's not true!” she says. “I was just… trying something.”

Shawn considers her for a moment. “Did you like it?”

“You're a pig.”

“Wha— no, no, not like that,” Shawn backpedals. “I just mean… you said you were trying something tonight. So what did you learn?”

Topanga looks terrified. “I… I don't know.”

“It's okay,” Shawn says, and without really thinking about it he pulls her into a hug. He thinks about Cory, having the time of his life pretending to be him, and Topanga, who seems horrified at being discovered.

Maybe, he realizes, that's because unlike Cory, she wasn't pretending tonight. Maybe tonight was the first night in a long time that she hasn't had to pretend.

Shawn nudges her away but keeps his hands on her shoulders so he can look at her. “Can I say something to you? Not… not as your boyfriend’s best friend, as  _ your  _ friend.”

Topanga nods.

“I think… I think that right now, being with Cory doesn't make you happy.”

Topanga, as per usual, immediately jumps to correct him. “Cory and I have been together forever.”

“Sure, but I'm not talking about forever, I'm talking about right now,” Shawn points out. “And right now… you both seem kind of miserable.” She processes that. He adds, “I also can't help but notice that Cory’s not a girl.”

“You shush,” she says, and then more seriously, “Please don't tell anyone.” It reminds him of how she threatened to kill him when he found out about her crush on Cory, except it's nothing like that at all. There's no fierceness or anger now. She just sounds scared.

Because mysterious lesbians at a party for a high school you don't go to, that's cool. But when real life kicks back in, being gay isn't exactly a hot trend. He still remembers how much her reputation tanked that time everyone in school  _ thought  _ she and Cory slept together. If this kind of story got out, it could only be worse. 

“I won’t tell anybody,” Shawn promises. 

“Not even Cory, you understand?”

Shawn watches her swipe tears away from the corners of her eyes. “Are you gonna break up with him?”

That only makes the tears worse. “I think I have to,” she says. “It's… it feels like lying.” She scrubs away more tears. “Why is this happening to me?”

“Because you're beautiful, and smart, and strong,” he says. “So there had to be  _ something  _ wrong with you.” She laughs, which was his goal. He hugs her again and says, more sincerely, “There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with liking girls.”

Shawn goes back home to Turner’s after that, and he doesn’t hear from Cory or Topanga until the next day at school when Cory mournfully tells him that they broke up. Cory says they wanted to save their friendship before they became one of those couples that hated each other. Privately, Shawn thinks that’s partly true but it’s not the whole reason. But he doesn’t correct Cory.

He did promise Topanga. 


	3. Date Night

> **“I live with the guy. I’m his little buddy. We have no secrets.” - Shawn Hunter, “New Friends and Old”**

Shawn’s watching a late night movie on the couch when Turner gets back from his date with a Styrofoam box of leftovers and a little bounce in his step. “Nice date?” Shawn guesses, glancing up from the TV. “Nice enough to make you ignore your curfew?”

“Aw, Hunter, you’re not my real dad,” Turner jokes, going to put the leftovers in the fridge. “Yeah, I had a good time. After dinner we went to this coffee place-slash-bookstore, so, you know, I was in my element.”

“Coffee?”

“Books,” Turner says, rolling his eyes. “How was  _ your _ night? Get any work done on your ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ paper?”

“Mrs. Who?”

“You’re killin’ me,” Turner sighs, but he’s smiling.

His smile drops when the apartment door swings open. And there’s a man standing there. “John, you forgot your wallet in my car,” he says, waving a faded leather wallet in Turner’s direction. 

Shawn’s flabbergasted. “Thanks,” Turner says, blushing as he crosses the room to take back his wallet. “Uh, Shawn, this is Pete. Pete, Shawn.” 

“Jonathan’s told me a lot about you,” Pete says, going to shake Shawn’s hand. 

Shawn doesn’t even stand up, he’s still too shocked. “Oh,” he says, shaking Pete’s hand. “Yeah, cool.” He stops himself from commenting on the fact that Turner told Pete about him but didn’t tell him a damn thing about Pete. 

“Alright, well,” Pete says, looking awkward in the doorway. “I’ll call you,” he says to Turner. 

“Right, thanks for bringing this up,” Turner says, holding up his wallet. “See you.”

“Bye.” After Turner shuts the door he turns around and leans against it, like he can keep out any more awkwardness from seeping into the apartment. 

“Well,” he says, avoiding Shawn’s scalding stare. “I’m beat! Gonna hit the sack, goodnight.”

He starts walking toward his bedroom but Shawn jumps up. “John?”

“Yes?” he says, trying to pretend like the last three minutes didn’t just happen. 

Shawn points toward the closed door. “I don’t know if you noticed this, but that was a guy.”

“Your attention to detail astounds me, Hunter.”

“Why did you go on a date with a guy?” Shawn barrels forward. “John… are you gay?” There’s a lot he’s trying to put together in his head. At the trailer park, sometimes older boys would get together and trade cigarettes and make out, but it always seemed like something they were supposed to outgrow. No one ever talked about grown men doing that kind of stuff. 

“Well, I’m not gay,” Turner says carefully, starting to slide into his teacher voice. “But, yeah, sometimes I go on dates with men. Shawn, have you ever heard the word ‘bisexual’?”

“Yeah, Mr. Feeny told us about it.”

Turner does a double take. “Mr. Feeny talked about this stuff with you?”

“Yeah,” Shawn says, thinking back to their history class a couple weeks ago. “He said it happened in 1976 because that was 200 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”

“That… that’s the  _ bicentennial _ , Shawn,” Turner says. “Bisexual means I go on dates with women but I also go on dates with men.”

Shawn processes that, trying to reconcile the Turner who teaches about Odysseus and rides a motorcycle and butts heads with Feeny with the Turner who does all of that and also dates men. “Okay,” he says finally, wrapping it all together in his head. “I think I get it.”

Turner looks embarrassed. “Look, Hunter, if you want to go back and stay with the Matthews, I understand.”

“No, no, I’m staying,” Shawn assures him, partly because he likes living in Turner’s bachelor pad but also because, as much as he loves Cory’s family, he always feels underfoot when he stays with them. And he hates feeling like he takes up too much space. “Just… can I ask you a question?”

Turner hesitates. “Alright, how about you ask it and I decide if I’m going to answer it?”

“What do you like more?” Shawn says. “Dating girls or dating guys?”

Finally, the mixture of embarrassment and concern melts from Turner’s face and he grins. “I’m going to answer that question with a question,” he says. “Who’s cooler, Storm or Wolverine?”

Shawn frowns. “Well, Storm’s powers are definitely better. But Wolverine has a cooler backstory. Except, wait, Storm’s backstory is she used to be a queen, right? So Storm.” He pauses. “But wait, wait, Wolverine has cooler story arcs and also he can’t die so that’s pretty cool, so…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. They’re both cool.” 

“Exactly,” Turner smirks. “For me, I don’t really think of dating as comparing men to women or vice versa. It’s more about appreciating people as individuals.” 

He says goodnight for real a moment later, and after a few minutes of kicking around the apartment, lost in thought, Shawn sits back down on the couch and returns to his movie. He thinks about Mr. Turner, and Pete, and the older boys at the trailer park, and Topanga and that girl Tiff from Hamilton High. 

He falls asleep not thinking about anything at all. 

 


	4. Other Girls

> **“I mean, as soon as I kissed Melissa, Shawn, I felt worse.” - Cory Matthews, “A Kiss Is More Than A Kiss”**

Cory doesn’t take the breakup very well. Shawn keeps trying to set him up on dates and Cory keeps ruining them, either by waxing poetic about Topanga all night or flat-out refusing to go. And when he finally managed to kiss the latest girl, Melissa, he confessed to Shawn later that he didn’t feel anything. 

“It’s like I can’t kiss another girl that’s not Topanga,” Cory laments while he and Shawn raid Turner’s freezer for Klondike bars. “I don’t even want to look at a girl that’s not Topanga.” 

Shawn leans against the counter and unwraps the corner of his ice cream bar. “You gotta get through this, buddy. There are other girls.” 

“I don’t want to get through anything,” Cory whines, cramming half his Klondike bar in his mouth. Cory’s always been able to bite down on ice cream without hurting his teeth. Shawn doesn’t get it. “Mom and Dad said that Topanga and I might date other people for a little but then she’ll realize that we’re meant to be together. Do you think that’ll happen?”

Shawn takes a bite of his own Klondike bar to stall. He  _ knows _ that won’t happen, but he can’t tell Cory that. “Maybe,” he says when he can’t stall anymore. “But you should try the ‘dating other people’ thing in the meantime.” 

Cory sighs, deflating slightly. “I am trying,” he says. “But I just don’t see it. I don’t see how I could feel like that about any other girls.” 


	5. Gossip

**“I don't have all the information yet. I've only been in the bathroom three times this morning.” - Topanga Lawrence, “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter"**

Shawn finds Topanga outside Turner’s classroom on Tuesday morning to ask her advice about impressing Dana Pruitt. Her spiel yesterday about how he doesn't understand women had been harsh, but accurate. He wanted more of that blunt Topanga honesty.

But just as he goes to say hi, he realizes how upset she looks. “Hey… Topanga,” he says, stopping in his tracks. “Everything okay?”

“No,” she says. Topanga’s pretty good at disguising when she's been crying, so he can't tell by looking at her face. Her voice sounds rough, though. “Don't worry about it. It's not your problem.”

Shawn frowns. “You're my friend, so it's my problem,” he says, guiding her into Turner’s empty classroom. He sits on top of his usual desk and, after a moment, Topanga sits on top of Cory’s to face him. “What's going on?”

She purses her lips. Then— “I was in the bathroom this morning, listening to gossip. And apparently the hot topic this morning is how I'm a ‘dyke.’” 

“I didn't say anything, I swear,” Shawn says immediately.

“I know you didn't,” Topanga says, trying to keep her hands from shaking. “They figured it out anyway. I was in the stall and I heard them all talking and I… I almost didn't come to class.”

“I'm glad you did,” Shawn says. “Look, don't… don't let anything they said mess with you. Alright? They're just jealous.”

Topanga gives him a look. “They think I’m a freak,” she says. “They’re not  _ jealous _ , Shawn.”

“Sure they are,” he says. “Because they’re still stuck getting squishy about us gross men. But you were smart enough to figure out that women are where it’s at.” She rolls her eyes at him, but it looks a little bit like her mood may have lifted. “If a couple of girls want to talk about you behind your back, screw ‘em. I’ll talk about you to your face. Topanga Lawrence is a genius, and amazing, and one of the best people at John Adam High and also in the world.” 

Now she’s blushing, embarrassed. “Thanks, Shawn.” 

“C’mere,” he says, hopping off the desk to pull her into a hug. He laughs at how obvious their height difference is when he’s hugging her. “You’re so little.”

“Shut up.”

“We should call Guinness I think you might be the tiniest lesbian in the world.” 


	6. The Most Magical Place on Earth

> **“Cory, you could hire the blimp, fly over Florida flashing my name in neon and it wouldn’t mean a thing to me.” - Topanga Lawrence, “The Happiest Show on Earth”**

When Cory decides he’s going to Disney World to follow Topanga, Shawn tries to talk him out of it. Cory’s so caught up in jealousy and worried that Topanga’s going to be swept off her feet by Ronnie Waterman that he’s not thinking clearly. (Shawn knows, but can’t tell Cory, that the one he should be jealous of is Kristen Hoffman, who’s also going on the Orlando trip. Topanga’s been crushing on her for two weeks.) 

“I’m going, and that’s final, and I hope you’ll come with me,” Cory announces, folding his arms and shooting his most authoritative look at Shawn. “You can’t tell me one reason not to go.”

“You’re right,” Shawn sighs, defeated. “I can’t tell you  _ the one reason _ you shouldn’t go.” 

“Then we’re going!” Cory says, beaming. “I just hope we get a chance to ride the ride with the little purple dragon. I love that little purple dragon.” 

So Shawn works his connections and gets them on a cargo plane to Orlando. He spends the next day and a half watching Cory get shot down by Topanga all over EPCOT— outside the dolphin exhibit, in front of The Living Seas, in about half of countries in the World Showcase. 

That night, when Shawn spots Topanga chasing Cory down to confront him in front of the fountains by Spaceship Earth, he decides to give them their space. He sits on a bench near Ellen’s Energy Adventure and waits it out, watching families and friends and couples walk past. 

Eventually, Shawn decides to go check on how things are going. He finds Cory sitting alone next to the fountains, staring into space. “Cor?” he says, crouching down beside him. “Everything okay?”

“She’s gay, Shawnie.”

Shawn blinks, scrambling to fake a decent reaction. “Whaaaat? Topanga? Gay?”

“She already told me you knew.”

“Oh.” Shawn sits down next to Cory. “Are you mad?”

Cory shakes his head. He looks kind of rattled. “I feel like a jerk. She kept trying to tell me to give it up, she wasn’t interested, and I just wouldn’t listen.”

Shawn’s relieved he doesn’t have to keep secrets from Cory anymore. “You’re listening now, that’s the important thing,” he assures his best friend. “She was afraid you wouldn’t want to be friends with her at all.”

Cory shakes his head like that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “I’ll always be her friend,” he says. “Just like you and I will always be friends.” He slings an arm around Shawn. “Thanks for taking me to EPCOT, Shawnie.”

Shawn smiles and looks up at the illuminated geodesic sphere, leaning into his best friend.


End file.
